National Museum of the American Indian
The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers.
The museum has three facilities. The National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., opened on September 21, 2004, on Fourth Street and Independence Avenue, Southwest. The George Gustav Heye Center, a permanent museum, is located at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, opened in October 1994. The Cultural Resources Center, a research and collections facility, is located in Suitland, Maryland. The foundations for the present collections were first assembled in the former Museum of the American Indian in New York City, which was established in 1916, and which became part of the Smithsonian in 1989.
History
Fundraising and advocacy for the creation of what would eventually become the National Museum of the American Indian launched in 1982 at the Kennedy Center's Night of the First Americans event. In conjunction with this star-studded gala, Retha Walden Gambaro organized an exhibition featuring 120 Native American artists. Gambaro was president of the Amerindian Circle of the Smithsonian Institution, an artist in her own right, co-owner of the first gallery in the U.S. capital dedicated to Native American artists, and an early champion for the creation of a national museum dedicated to Native American art and culture.Following controversy over the discovery by Indian leaders that the Smithsonian Institution held more than 12,000–18,000 human remains, mostly in storage, United States Senator Daniel Inouye introduced in 1989 the National Museum of the American Indian Act. Passed as Public Law 101-185, it established the National Museum of the American Indian as "a living memorial to Native Americans and their traditions". The Act also required that human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony be considered for repatriation to tribal communities, as well as objects acquired illegally. Since 1989 the Smithsonian has repatriated over 5,000 individual remains – about 1/3 of the total estimated human remains in its collection.
On September 21, 2004, for the inauguration of the Museum, Senator Inouye addressed an audience of around 20,000 American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, which was the largest gathering in Washington D.C. of Indigenous people to its time.
The creation of the museum brought together the collections of the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, founded in 1922, and the Smithsonian Institution. The Heye collection became part of the Smithsonian in June 1990, and represents approximately 85% of the holdings of the NMAI. The Heye Collection was formerly displayed at Audubon Terrace in Uptown Manhattan, but had long been seeking a new building.
The Museum of the American Indian considered options of merging with the Museum of Natural History, accepting a large donation from Ross Perot to be housed in a new museum building to be built in Dallas, or moving to the U.S. Customs House. The Heye Trust included a restriction requiring the collection to be displayed in New York City, and moving the collection to a Museum outside of New York aroused substantial opposition from New York politicians. The current arrangement represented a political compromise between those who wished to keep the Heye Collection in New York, and those who wanted it to be part of the new NMAI in Washington, DC. The NMAI was initially housed in lower Manhattan at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, which was refurbished for this purpose and remains an exhibition site; its building on the Mall in Washington, DC opened on September 21, 2004.
Directors
In January 2022, the Smithsonian announced that Cynthia Chavez Lamar, an employee since 2014, would take over as director of NMAI on February 14. Her position will also oversee the George Gustav Heye Center in Lower Manhattan and the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland. As an enrolled member at San Felipe Pueblo, she will be the first Native American woman to serve as a Smithsonian museum director. Previously, she was NMAI's acting associate director for collections and operations, and had also interned at the museum in 1994, and worked there as an associate curator from 2000 to 2005.Before Chavez Lamar, Machel Monenerkit had been the Acting Director, taking the position in January 2021. As of 2023, Greg Sarris serves as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.
Kevin Gover was the director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian beginning December 2007 until January 2021. He is currently the Under Secretary for Museums and Culture at the Smithsonian. He is a former professor of law at the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University in Tempe, an affiliate professor in its American Indian Studies Program and co-executive director of the university's American Indian Policy Institute. Gover, 52, grew up in Oklahoma and is a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and of Comanche descent. He received his bachelor's degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University and his J.D. degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law. He was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree from Princeton University in 2001.
Gover succeeded W. Richard West Jr., who was the founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian.
West was strongly criticized in 2007 for having spent $250,000 on travel in four years and being away from the museum frequently on overseas travel. This was official travel funded by the Smithsonian, and many within the Native American community offered defenses of West and his tenure.
Locations
The museum of American Indian has three branches: National Museum of the American Indian in the National Mall, George Gustav Heye Center in New York City, and the Cultural Resources Center in Maryland. The National Native Americans Veterans Memorial is also located near the museum.National Mall (Washington, D.C.)
The groundbreaking ceremony for the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall was held on September 28, 1999. The museum opened on September 21, 2004.Fifteen years in the making, it was the first national museum in the country dedicated exclusively to Native Americans. The five-story,, curvilinear building is clad in a golden-colored Kasota limestone designed to evoke natural rock formations shaped by wind and water over thousands of years.
The museum is set in a -site and is surrounded by simulated wetlands. The museum's east-facing entrance, its prism window and its high space for contemporary Native performances are direct results of extensive consultations with Native peoples. Similar to the Heye Center in Lower Manhattan, the museum offers a range of exhibitions, film and video screenings, school group programs, public programs and living culture presentations throughout the year.
The museum's architect and project designer is Canadian Douglas Cardinal ; its design architects are GBQC Architects of Philadelphia and architect Johnpaul Jones. Disagreements during construction led to Cardinal's being removed from the project, but the building retains his original design intent. He provided continued input during the museum's construction. The structural engineering firm chosen for this project was Severud Associates.
File:Nashville I style gorget Castalian Springs Mound Site HRoe 2012.jpg|thumb|Shell gorget from Castalian Springs Mound Site, made around 1200-1325 AD |left
The museum's project architects are Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects Ltd. of Seattle and SmithGroup of Washington, D.C., in association with Lou Weller, the Native American Design Collaborative, and Polshek Partnership Architects of New York City; Ramona Sakiestewa and Donna House also served as design consultants. The landscape architects are Jones & Jones Architects and Landscape Architects Ltd. of Seattle and EDAW, Inc., of Alexandria, Virginia.
In general, Native Americans have filled the leadership roles in the design and operation of the museum and have aimed at creating a different atmosphere and experience from museums of European and Euro-American culture. Donna E. House, the Navajo and Oneida botanist who supervised the landscaping, has said, "The landscape flows into the building, and the environment is who we are. We are the trees, we are the rocks, we are the water. And that had to be part of the museum." This theme of organic flow is reflected by the interior of the museum, whose walls are mostly curving surfaces, with almost no sharp corners.
Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe
The Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe has five stations serving different regional foods: Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Meso-America, and the Great Plains. Mitsitam's first Executive Chef was the Diné chef Freddie Bitsoie. The museum has published a ''Mitisam Cafe Cookbook.''George Gustav Heye Center (New York City)
traveled throughout North and South America collecting native objects. His collection was assembled over 54 years, beginning in 1903. He started the Museum of the American Indian and his Heye Foundation in 1916. The Heye Foundation's Museum of the American Indian opened to the public on Audubon Terrace in New York City in 1922.The museum at Audubon Terrace closed in 1994 and part of the collection is now housed at The Museum's George Gustav Heye Center, that occupies two floors of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Lower Manhattan. The Beaux Arts-style building, designed by architect Cass Gilbert, was completed in 1907. It is a designated National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. The center's exhibition and public access areas total about. The Heye Center offers a range of exhibitions, film and video screenings, school group programs and living culture presentations throughout the year.